Latest News

Activist groups, including Scouting for All, urge President Obama not to accept the honorary Presidency of the Boy Scouts of America until they stop discriminating.

Scouting for All is a 100% Volunteer 501-(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization. Every dollar donated goes toward our education and advocacy programs, and is tax deductible.

Visitor Count:

Petition Count:

http://www.uua.org/news/scouts/050316_statement.html

Statement from the Unitarian Universalist Association

March 16, 2005
A recent post to the UU-Scouting email list announced that a group calling itself the Unitarian Universalist Scouters
Organization (UUSO) had reached an agreement with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to develop a new UU scouting
curriculum and UU religious emblem. This email was forwarded to our Information Office and was the first word about
this that the UUA received. The UUA's Youth Office has since received several more inquiries about this organization
and its work, so this email is an attempt to clarify the situation. The UUSO has no formal relationship to the
UUA and is not recognized as an affiliate organization by the UUA's
Board of Trustees. The UUA still makes available to UU Scouts our Religion in Life manual and the Religion in Life
emblem. We encourage the UU Scout to earn his religious emblem, to have it awarded to him by his
congregation, and to wear it in the appropriate place on his uniform. We have never heard of even a single instance
when a UU Scout was told he could not wear his Religion in Life emblem on his uniform. Contrary to the statement
in the email that "an entire generation of Scouts had grown up without the opportunity to wear the emblem
of their faith on their uniform," the UUA has sold more than 500 Religion in Life emblems over the past seven
years to UU Scouts. The disagreement between the UUA and the BSA concerns the BSA's ongoing discrimination against
gay Scouts and Scout leaders and its requirement of a religious litmus test for
membership. Unitarian Universalist congregations have always been places where members are free to express religious
doubt, and we are steadfast in our support for the rights of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender people. For
us, these are religious principles, and we will not relinquish our responsibility as parents, teachers, and ministers
to inform our youth of the principles of their faith community. The UUA has always acknowledged the many benefits
that Scouting offers to boys and young men. We will continue to support UU youth who enter Scouting by distributing
the Religion in Life manual and emblem, and our congregations will honor UU Scouts when they earn this emblem of
their faith community.

Scouting For All is not an alternative scouting program.
We are an education and advocacy organization reaching out to gay and nontheist youth and adults in our effort to get the Boy Scouts of America to rescind its exlusionary policy.

Any communications sent to Scouting for All or any Scouting for All representative may be published on the Scouting for All web site or in Scouting for All materials unless the communication specifically requests that it not be published.